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> losing body fat means that you must continuously make choices that decrease your comfort in some way - eating fewer highly rewarding foods, maintaining a state of hunger, increasing activity level

Not necessarily! I've successfully lost a lot of body fat (~50 pounds over the last 18 months) by deliberately changing my diet to eat more foods (that I like) that are lower in energy density than what I was eating before -- fruits and veggies, lean meats, etc. I do end up eating fewer stereotypically highly rewarding foods, but that's because I'm already full of other highly rewarding-to-me foods and don't feel like having a treat or a huge fast food meal or whatever. And I'm certainly not tolerating frequent hunger!

You just restated what the OP said, but tried to paint it somehow in a more positive light. You yourself stated you are "eating fewer ... highly rewarding foods".

So what exactly are you contradicting in their statement?

They are trying to convince everyone that the fruit & veg & lean meats is every bit as enjoyable as a steak and piece of cheesecake. It may be for them, but as a rule I have my doubts.

There are some fruits and vegetables and lean meats (which absolutely includes "leaner cuts of steak with the fat trimmed off") that I quite sincerely like as much as junk food, if not more. Two pan-fried salmon fillets and a big bowl of brussels sprouts with butter beats the pants off even a pretty good burger-and-fries, the main downside being the prep (and, well, the cost for most people). A pound of fresh strawberries is damn good and not something I have to force myself to eat, etcera.

I don't deliberately avoid dessert, though I do tend to eat it less than I used to. I'll have the cheesecake if I really feel like it.

My sympathies to those who really just don't like any fruits or vegetables, but there are lots of other margins to operate on in lowering your dietary energy density. e.g., for a side with your steak, I assert most people will enjoy a baked potato with a bit of butter (~1 cal/gram) about as much as garlic bread (~3 to 4 cal/gram).

I agree that a salmon filet is tasty. I don't often eat a pound of strawberries though. Both of those are too expensive to eat regularly, and like you said a salmon filet is a lot of effort compared to a burger.

> I'll have the cheesecake if I really feel like it.

That tells me the writing on the wall, and let me be clear about this, the writing is what needs to be written and what people need to read - you're making the decision to NOT have cheesecake when you only kind of feel like it. It's a game of weighing the pros and cons and learning to be satisfied with what you know you should have instead of turning around one day and loving the healthy food more than the unhealthy.

Just as an aside: > I assert most people will enjoy a baked potato with a bit of butter (~1 cal/gram) about as much as garlic bread (~3 to 4 cal/gram).

You're discounting the calories / gram of butter in your first calculation and including it in the second.

> you're making the decision to NOT have cheesecake when you only kind of feel like it.

Chiming in as someone whom the GP comment resonates with: the point here is that you literally come to enjoy it less. The natural amount that you would eat isn't constrained entirely by health choices. I find finishing a single slice of cheesecake to be overwhelming: a second one would be actively unpleasant.

If you were following your assumptions here to their conclusions, you would conclude that people who eat unhealthily would eat cheesecake 24/7 if it weren't for conscious health choices. This is trivially untrue, no?

The original claim was that losing weight requires constant extra discomfort, and GP's (and my) claim is that this is false: you can move yourself (with initial discomfort) to an equilibrium that's more comfortable _and_ healthier than the status quo.

I feel the discomfort of constraining myself much less often now than I did when I ate like you. This is again trivial: if your preferences are aligned with healthy eating, you need to push against them less.

For whatever it's worth, I don't feel like I actually had to adapt my tastes at all in order to eat healthier. The main hurdle was figuring out how to prep in a way that's easy enough that I'll actually bother.

I wouldn't describe myself as actively adapting my tastes: I just ate better and eventually noticed my preferences shifting. I assume it's some combination of my brain getting more sensitive to the stimulus (of eg sugar), my gut changing, and my better diet reducing cravings.

> I ate like you

That's a weird judgement to throw in the midst. I haven't laid claim to my eating habits. I've had great success in losing weight in the past as well as recently by changing my eating habits for the positive. I just wanted people to realize that it's not always just a matter of learning to love yummy veggies and forgetting about icky cheesecake.

> if your preferences are aligned with healthy eating, you need to push against them less.

Agreed - but people have to accept that their preferences aren't always and possibly not ever going to align with healthy eating.

> That's a weird judgement to throw in the midst.

Sorry, I wasn't implying anything by this. Just absent-minded phrasing.

> people have to accept that their preferences aren't always and possibly not ever going to align with healthy eating.

Sure, I think it's possible some people can't make it through the transition to healthier preferences. That doesn't suggest that the original claim in the thread is correct.

The comment you originally responded to claimed that convexfunction was "restating" the claim that weight loss is pure effortful discomfort (from the top of the thread). Your response was that you doubt that healthy food can taste as good as junk food[1]. In the comment I responded directly to, you say that having cheesecake occasionally is evidence that a healthy person eating less cheesecake comes from conscious healthy effort.

These claims are what I'm pushing back against. I use way less willpower on food now than when I was a junkier eater[2].

[1] Note that the issue here might be that your definition of weight-loss-promoting foods is askew. Steak is a pretty reasonable part of a weight-loss diet, as long as you're not mindless about the quantity. As with the cheesecake example, eating the right amount of steak is a way more pleasant experience than eating too much.

[2] though thankfully never as bad as the avg US upper-middle-class diet

> That tells me the writing on the wall, and let me be clear about this, the writing is what needs to be written and what people need to read - you're making the decision to NOT have cheesecake when you only kind of feel like it. It's a game of weighing the pros and cons and learning to be satisfied with what you know you should have instead of turning around one day and loving the healthy food more than the unhealthy.

Let me rephrase: since changing my diet to include more low-energy-density foods (and being deliberate about eating large portions of them), I find myself less frequently even considering having dessert after dinner.

> You're discounting the calories / gram of butter in your first calculation and including it in the second.

No? I'll put 7g of butter (50 calories) on a 300g potato (280 calories) and not at all feel like I needed more butter. Even if you double that amount of butter, it comes out to 1.2 cal/g.

Do you weigh everything you eat?

Not quite everything, but outside of rare social eating situations I do weigh my food when I'd otherwise have to make a bad estimate for caloric content (i.e. not single-serving packaged food or food from a restaurant that publishes nutrition facts). I also track my calories, though I'll willfully go over my daily calorie target whenever I feel like it with approximately no guilt.

I'm sure this has contributed to the success of my "diet" -- I also started lifting weights again in this period -- but the comment I was originally replying to was about how weight loss requires discomfort, and the energy density thing has been the key insight for me on how to make it not require discomfort. I see now it reads like I was solely attributing my weight loss to this one weird trick (though I do think it's been the most important factor), so, mea culpa.

Fair enough. I've had excellent success with just calorie tracking / weighing without massively changing my diet - by setting a small caloric deficit I was able to consistently slowly weight over months without massively changing things and enjoying all my usual foods.

I'm glad your system has worked for you.

How are 2 egg size potatos and salmon fillet in an over a lot of effort?

> I assert most people will enjoy a baked potato ... about as much as garlic bread

See I'd assert the opposite, or at least the following more nuanced version, for myself:

If I make a baked potato, I'll eat it and be quite happy -- even delighted! -- with it. But! If I have to choose between a baked potato or garlic bread (say, on a restaurant menu) I'd choose the garlic bread virtually every time, unless I'm exerting Herculean levels of willpower to choose healthier options. And if I'm served a baked potato and garlic bread, I'd probably eat the potato, and then somehow find room to eat the garlic bread anyways.

I don't disagree that healthy food can be very tasty, but I mitigate my own struggles with healthy eating by "merely" never keeping unhealthy options around, so I can focus more on the joy of the healthy food, and not have to constantly choose to avoid the high-calorie treats.

"the cost for most people". -- I disagree, it just takes some planning.

A Big Mac menu goes for 10+ dollars where I live.

Sirloin steak, which is reasonably lean (you can go leaner and cheaper with something like London Broil, every 3 weeks it is sold at 2.50 t0 3 dollars per pound), when on sale (this is the planning I was referring to) can be bought for 3-4 dollars per pound. One can buy 20 pounds for 60-80 dollars. A big bag of frozen vegetables, enough for 10 meals, it's sold at Costco for 10 dollars.

A whole day of abundant eating (2 pounds of steak and vegetables) can cost less than a Big Mac menu. You can throw in some potatoes and eggs and pay per day what you would pay at MacDonalds or equivalent per meal.

I've had this weird obsession with that Alone show, but there was an episode where one of the contestants decides her nutrition is messed up and she's going to eat the stomach contents of some wild hares she's trapped.

She describes it as one of the tastiest meals she had the entire show. Literally half digested arctic vegetation.

Your body rewards you for eating those things which satisfy your needs. McDonalds will do that, but so will a salad.

One of the fad diets for a while was the "one thing" diet. You could have anything you wanted.. but you could only eat that single item that entire day. Cheesecake? You're having cheesecake for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Very quickly participants discover it is very easy to burn out on sweets and junk.

If you eat nutritious food that will actually give you that reward craving.

Also, nothing wrong with steak. Nothing really wrong with cheesecake either - but you only need a tiny bit of those things. There's a reason most people want tiny steaks and not big honking ones, especially people who eat steak with regularity.

One can and will lose weight (say, a 220 pound man) by eating two medium McDonald's Big Mac Menu a day (no sauce, diet soda option). It amounts to 1800 kcal per day. Being lean trumps quality of food and "healthy" whatever for health short-term. That's a set result at this point.

That is, and this not medical advice, but something I have a done a few times while on vacation, you can do a 10-15-21 days of the above-mentioned McDonald's diet and easily get leaner without starving, looking for "healthy foods", counting calories or steps.

The McRib is 550 cals. I'm now wondering if one could do a weight maintenance program by simply eating 3 McRib's a day whenever they come back on the menu.

When I'm cutting (like right now) I will sometimes eat 3 McDoubles as my nutrition for the whole day. The macros are excellent.

Eating sometimes is okay, I guess. Don't forget to take supplements for the micros you're missing. Eating the same thing every day though, requires discipline. I'd get fed up eating the same thing again and again even if it's some kind of a gorgeous meal.

I mean, the Alone people are literally starving. Levels of hunger play a huge part in how much you enjoy your food. I really enjoy a fresh bell pepper at times, but not right after desert.

You're arguing that people who eat bad things constantly only want a little of them when that is obviously not true. Plenty of people eat far too much steak far too often. People are keyed to like salt, fat, & sugar. It's a balancing act of moderation, it's not just a matter of finding that you love vegetables and you will always find them just as satisfying as Twizzlers.

The "taste" changes when you change your diet for a long enough period, which means no more than a few weeks/months. It is like drinking coffee with sugar, as I used to do two decades ago. After getting used to the bitter, hot reality of black coffee, the absurdly sweet nature of coffee + sugar or those concoctions served at Starbucks and the like tastes terrible, as well as giving the wrong "feel".

Chicken breast with a little flour to help caramelize over high heat and some herbs (basil, oregano, thyme) tastes excellent and feels light and proper.

I am a person with a terrifying appetite if left to my own devices. And if at the beginning of a "diet" the scary appetite and intrusive food thoughts make themselves feel heard loud and clear, after a while, thanks to the physiological changes that occur as the food consumed changes and a mind that is now preoccupied with things and thoughts other than food, as time goes on it becomes much easier to eat fewer and more "healthy" (hard to define, but we know it when we see it) calories.

"Pushing through until it becomes easy" is not a social policy, and other kinds of interventions are needed to solve the large-scale obesity problem. But at the individual level, it works for me and millions of others.

They do it that way. It does not have to be. You just gotta eat different highly rewarding foods.

E.g. do eat that steak. But without a BBQ sauce you bought. Just salt and pepper is great actually. But a butter and cream garlic sauce (no sugar) is also awesome. Maybe some blue cheese on top instead?

Skip the potato. Just that steak with some nice caramelized onions or veggies you like as a side. But that's not even needed.

Highly rewarding I can tell you. Yes it's not sweet and rewarding. It's not carb loaded rewarding but it's absolutely delicious, fills you up for a long time. Yes this is going in the Keto carnivore direction so might not be for you but having eaten Keto (with less than 20g of carbs a day) I can tell you it was absolutely great and rewarding taste wise as I could finally enjoy cream based sauces and bacon again instead of low fast sugary stuff that makes you hungry again after an hour.

My success has always come without a real gimmick and simply calorie counting. Have what you want, but be aware what you're eating and work towards a goal. I set a slow weight loss goal so I'm not hungry due to extreme of a deficit. I can still eat my ice cream if I've made sure that I still have caloric room at the end of the day. After a while off counting I find my proportions are getting too big, I realign with some tracking again, and carry on.

I'd actually advocate for potatoes as a "weight loss food". They're quite low in caloric density relative to most other "carbs" since they have so much water; there's even a meme "potato diet" (just eat potatoes and almost nothing else for a few weeks or months, basically) with lots of glowing anecdotal success stories.

And, well, I failed horribly at conveying my actual strategy (I guess we're getting hung up on "fruits, vegetables, and lean meats are supposedly not very rewarding"?) because I would describe what I'm doing as "eat different highly rewarding foods".

It depends, I have a really big sweet tooth, but it is a self-reinforcing craving. There are people that really do not enjoy sweet things, and a lot of that has to do with those people not consuming sweets as a part of a regular diet, so there is not the rise/crash cycle, which is ultimately what makes it hard to get away from sugars.

Ingredients are important, but preparation and recipes also very important in creating an enjoyable meal.

That one word you elided, "stereotypically", was doing a lot of work! I'm not actually eating fewer highly rewarding-to-me foods, just less junk food, and I'm not constantly hungry.

The implicit context there is that the changes to diet and behaviour don't have to be "choices that decrease your comfort in some way".

That is, it doesn't have to be uncomfortable.

By "stereotypically" highly rewarding, I think they are saying that they were able, over time, to increase their enjoyment of less calorie dense food. One non-traditional diet book I read basically said, "many people have to eat more vegetables to successfully diet. So spend a month experimenting with preparing different vegetables all different ways until you find ways to prepare vegetable meals that you find delicious."

He said that he eats fewer _stereotypically_ high-reward foods because he eats other high-reward foods. How do you interpret that as equivalent to "continually decreasing comfort"?

The pt is that the reward function isn't static, and you can move yourself to an equilibrium with as much utility/comfort that is much healthier.

This has been my experience too. Eg, I'm almost a little grossed out by the proportion of refined carbs on the plates of some of my friends: not only is it unhealthy, it's the most boring part of the meal (to my palate)! And my habituation to sugar has gotten low enough that things taste much sweeter to me than they do to most people.

If anything, this has _increased_ the reward I get from eating, since their unfettered preferences need to be consciously constrained by awareness of their health, while mine line up pretty well.

I think you opportunistically left out the "stereotypically" in your quote. OP is not saying they are eating less rewarding foods for them but less foods that others might find rewarding.

Reward ≠ comfort. GP is saying that they reduced their calorie intake while actually eating more, and not incurring extra hunger. Which is absolutely plausible.

I think they’re saying that they eat equivalently rewarding foods that are more healthy.

Your using Satiety Index method. An excellent method.

https://optimisingnutrition.com/calculating-satiety/amp/

Understanding satiety is a powerful tool in managing hunger and health.

Can you recommend a few of the foods you switched to?

- Carbs: potatoes, rice, pasta (yes really, the common element here is high water content; the other stuff you put on these can of course make a big difference)

- Dairy: Greek yogurt or cottage cheese are usually part of my breakfast. I'll have a whey protein shake in milk most days, since I'm also trying to build muscle; liquids don't normally "count" toward satiety in the same way, though milk itself is complicated and contributes at least a little more toward satiety because the protein makes gastric emptying slower.

- Meats: Most unprocessed meats, as well as some deli meats (e.g. roast beef or ham but not salami), are great on satiety per calorie IMO, even if not usually considered "lean". I guess don't make a habit out of prime rib? I'd credit "plan to have a large amount of meat for most dinners" as the most important single change I made, perhaps in part because it makes me less likely to have something from a restaurant for dinner instead but also because meat is just so satisfying without being too energy-dense. Eggs count here too, ~2 cal/gram.

- Veggies: anything is great, but my favorites are brussels sprouts, sugar snap peas, spinach, asparagus, and corn. This won't be news to anyone but salads are usually a good choice if you're eating from a restaurant.

- Fruits: anything is great, but my favorites are strawberries, watermelon, bananas, and oranges (I prefer clementines because they're easy to eat)

- Junk food: I find ice cream sandwiches (~150 calories) are a convenient way to sate my sweet tooth in a way that isn't ridiculous, even if they're not really low energy density. Also, fancy dark chocolate is hard to overeat.

And a special mention to making my own coffee (with generous milk and sugar-free flavored syrup, ~60 calories per cup) rather than getting lattes from a coffee shop (~150 to 200 calories).

Fresh fruit is a big one for me.

I'm happy for you! But this is exactly what I mean about the feeling and experience of hunger not being comparable.

I lost weight during the pandemic by just trying to make sure I was hungry by the next meal time.

By that I mean, I would eat breakfast and then see how hungry I was at lunchtime. If I wasn’t very hungry for lunch, then I would still eat lunch, but I tried eating less at breakfast the next day. Same with lunch-to-dinner.

Over time my meal portion sizes came down, but I was not looking directly at that, I was just paying attention to the feeling of hunger.

What I realized was that I would eat a big breakfast and then a big lunch just because it was lunchtime. So I was overeating; basically taking in more calories than my body needed. It was a combination of habit and not thinking about what I was feeling. I realized that I should feel pretty hungry before a meal, but I wasn’t letting that happen.

I totally agree with you that hunger is subjective and hard to measure outside of our own perception. I’m not sure I could have or would have done this based on someone else’s coaching. It’s hard to calibrate my personal feeling of “hungry enough” based on what another person says. And it takes motivation, which has to come from within.

Motivation generally doesn't work for the long term.

A few months you may be skinner. 1,2,3 years, you may have maintained the weight loss.

10 years later will probably be fatter. Those are the numbers.

I think, as a society, we're having trouble grappling with the implications of the hormonal changes that happen due to fat set points increasing over time. It seems to make it nearly impossible for some people to lose weight over a long run of time. Whatever they lose, their body will try very hard, apparently for the rest of their lives, to put it back on.

But what I think we're having trouble in understanding what this means is that it doesn't mean obesity as a social problem can't be solved. It might mean some amount of people who are already obese will never be able to sustainably change that fact, but it's not like people are being born with naturally higher fat set points. That is a hormonal change that happens when you become obese and stay that way for a long time. Interventions that focus on younger people who have not yet become obese can still work. But this is contrary and different to how the entire obesity industrial complex works. It is focused on treating overweight and obese people, not on preventing new people from ever getting that way in the first place. Even with children, we focus the interventions on trying to help fat kids lose weight. We should probably expect that to work at least a little bit better than trying to intervene in adults, but even better still is to work with the kids who aren't obese, which at an early enough age is all of them, and figure out how to keep them that way.

> losing body fat means that you must continuously make choices that decrease your comfort in some way - eating fewer highly rewarding foods, maintaining a state of hunger, increasing activity level

It is interesting to see "increasing activity level" as being a decrease in comfort. But I suppose that's because "comfort" here isn't defined absolutely. I also am not sure that "comfort" is an attribute that should be optimized for in disregard for all others.

If this statement is read as "anything that does not have 100% positive feedback is undesirable" then I think it would be very challenging to make any improvements in a person's life.

But then I also don't think that "comfort" is necessarily an ideal target to optimize. I think a more holistic measure such as "satisfaction" is a more productive target. We can find "satisfaction" in things that are not 100% pleasant but which in turn result in greater happiness or feelings of contentment than doing only those things that have positive feedback.

This measure of "comfortable" also does not seem to account for the secondary effects of "comfortable" choices. E.g., if we eat only "highly rewarding foods" and become obese we see discomfort in other parts of life (loss of mobility, health issues, difficulty performing mundane physical tasks, etc)

I don't like to sweat. I did construction work with my dad in the Texas heat. When I looked at careers, I chose one that I can do indoors.

I'm not saying that is good, I'm saying that is a strong value statement that I made when I was younger. It's hard to change values, even in the face of evidence.

I think people should find exercise that they enjoy. I have struggled with this due to other physical limitations (in addition to my weight) and my attitude and cognitive behaviors. I now enjoy riding my bike, hiking, and swimming.

About 15 years ago I adopted an informal low-carb diet: I started by skipping instant breakfast for breakfast and ended by adopting the Carl’s Jr. lettuce-wrapped burgers for lunch.

The goal was to change my cholesterol (it worked), not lose weight, and I ate however much I wanted.

But at the same time I lost 30 pounds over about three months. I didn’t even notice the change for the first month. I wasn’t fat to start, and by the end I was startlingly thin. Anecdotal, obviously.

I feel like anybody, including scientists, that speaks about hunger when it relates to being overweight, has never been overweight, or is lying to themselves.

We don’t eat because we’re hungry, we eat because we’re bored.

> we eat because we’re bored.

And because we're stressed. And because we expect to eat. And because our stomachs are empty. And because we have our thirst signal confused for hunger. And ...

I bet there are at least 20 distinct sensations that people feel as 'hunger'

People in developed countries have become too accustomed to comfort. We need be accept a certain level of discomfort and pain. Embrace the suck.

And most people with high BMIs didn't get that way eating steak and baked potatoes. In fact, if you live entirely on that diet it's quite difficult to get fat.

> if you live entirely on that diet it's quite difficult to get fat

I believe that for myself, being able to eat like a king from many different culinary traditions has been a major factor in my fat gain.

"Obesity is a major health risk, with junk food consumption playing a central role in weight gain, because of its high palatability and high-energy nutrients. The Cafeteria (CAF) diet model for animal experiments consists of the same tasty but unhealthy food products that people eat (e.g. hot dogs and muffins), and considers variety, novelty and secondary food features, such as smell and texture. This model, therefore, mimics human eating patterns better than other models." - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33309818/#:~:text=The%20Cafe....

> The feeling of hunger is not comparable between people.

I wish this were the baseline understanding everyone shared! Even as one person, as my mental health has been differently treated over time, I've been shocked at how different the subjective experience of hunger at various calorie deficits has been.